ACLU, EFF sue for license plate record disclosure in Los Angeles

The two groups want one week's worth of data during Ramadan last year.

For months now, we’ve been following the rapid expansion of license plate readers across America. The growth is fueled by federal law enforcement grants that allow for such data to be instantly shared with federal authorities.

We’ve published stories showing how people crossing the US-Mexico border are routinely subject to license plate scans, which is in turn, shared with insurance companies. An intrepid data scientist claimed to have found the location of Minneapolis’ stationary LPRs based on studying public records of the complete log file that he had requested. (Months later, the state law allowing for such access was changed.) As recently as March 2013, Piedmont, a rich Northern California town that is surrounded by Oakland, moved toward placing such devices at its entire city border with Oakland.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sought “all ALPR data collected or generated between 12:01 AM on August 12, 2012 and 11:59 PM on August 19, 2012, including at a minimum, the license plate number, date, time, and location information for each license plate recorded.” In its complaint, the ACLU and the EFF allege that the LASD has “not provided Petitioner with any records.”

A spokesperson for the LAPD declined to comment to Ars on the case.

“We disagree with the complaint which is why we're more than willing to take argument in front of a judge and let the judge decide. This is where the rule of law will play a major role in this,” Steve Whitmore, an LASD spokesperson, told Ars. “Some of [these plates] are part of investigations, they are confidential. We're not going to give out that information, it's a violation of their privacy.”

Specifically, he cited, as do the LASD’s previous written responses, California’s Evidence 1040(b)(2): “Disclosure of the information is against the public interest because there is a necessity for preserving the confidentiality of the information that outweighs the necessity for disclosure in the interest of justice.”

However, Whitmore did not know whether an individual could request her or his own license plate reader data and associated photographs, nor if any individuals had done so previously

“You have every right to do that and I encourage you to do that,” he told Ars.

Seven days

Jennifer Lynch, one of the EFF attorneys that filed the lawsuit, told Ars that this particular week was selected for a number of reasons.

“I wanted to get the data for one week because I wanted to limit it so we could do something with it and weren't overwhelmed,” she said. “With a week's worth of data you can see where the cops are focusing their efforts. You would be able to see whether the same plate is scanned multiple times during the same week. [The LASD and LAPD] probably have the largest volume of this type of data and they're representative of large scale cities around the country.”

She added in that year, it was also the last week of the Muslim holy week of Ramadan.

“The fact that there has been quite a bit of government surveillance of Muslim communities in Los Angeles, and I thought getting license plate data from the last week of Ramadan might be able to tell us if the cops were focusing their surveillance efforts on Muslim communities and businesses during that week,” she clarified by e-mail.

Lynch added that she had no idea how many records might turn up on an average week, but suspected that it might be in the hundreds of thousands.

“The information that we have for LASD is that they're able to record more than 14,000 plates during a shift,” she said. “We would need to know how many cars are equipped with these cameras and how frequently they're driving around.”

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

66 Reader Comments

Totally insane, sooner or later they won't be able to afford to keep all the electronic records online. They're already complaining about budget cuts so now they have yet another system they'll need to maintain?

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

Specifically, he cited, as do the LASD’s previous written responses, California’s Evidence 1040(b)(2): “Disclosure of the information is against the public interest because there is a necessity for preserving the confidentiality of the information that outweighs the necessity for disclosure in the interest of justice.”

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I thought we already came to the determination in the Google Glass thread that license plates are not private?

If they are just looking at plate, date, and location data, how can they infer profiling? I imagine most scans are nothing more than a high level of noise that hides actual "hits" or follow-up actions, and it would be unfair for anyone to say so-and-so's LP was scanned because the implication of being "suspected or directly involved in illegal activity."

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I thought we already came to the determination in the Google Glass thread that license plates are not private?

It doesn't mean every data should be available to everyone. Similarly to your home address, while it's not very hard to track it doesn't mean every database which aggregate them should be public.

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

Yip.Anonymized data can be shared for research purposes, but individual records not.

Specifically, he cited, as do the LASD’s previous written responses, California’s Evidence 1040(b)(2): “Disclosure of the information is against the public interest because there is a necessity for preserving the confidentiality of the information that outweighs the necessity for disclosure in the interest of justice.”

So release those not under investigation.

I disagree. Disclosure of license plate information is only a problem WRT ongoing investigations if there's something in the data that says that there's such an investigation. Otherwise, it's just data.

While the PD/SD might use the information to locate specific vehicles that they're investigating, what has been requested contains none of the search criteria, so it's "clean" data, and can be delivered without any possible impact on any ongoing investigations.

I don't believe they should disclose this information, but I would like to see them forced to write up an actual policy that governs how long the records are kept, who can access them, and under what circumstances they can be accessed. E.g. releasing information to an insurance company is not appropriate and should not be permitted. Searches of the database should be logged by name of the person searching with a reason for the search. Data not needed for a specific investigation should be deleted after a reasonable amount of time.

I don't have any confidence now that the information is actually protected in any way other than a totally arbitrary choice made at the time of request. Not appropriate.

For those who say, "it's public information", I disagree. The data is transformed by volume. Any specific entry is the same as a police officer writing it down, but when you automatically record hundreds of thousands of entries a day, the result is something fundamentally different and should be treated as such.

"We're not going to give out that information, it's a violation of their privacy.”

No no no. The original scanning of my license plate violated my privacy.

Really ?

[sarcasm]Perhaps you should drive around without the plate on your car. Oh and I suggest wearing a mask and a hat too when you drive it. Perhaps you should also cover up the badges and labels on your car and disguise it too. [/sarcasm]

"We're not going to give out that information, it's a violation of their privacy.”

No no no. The original scanning of my license plate violated my privacy.

Really ?

[sarcasm]Perhaps you should drive around without the plate on your car. Oh and I suggest wearing a mask and a hat too when you drive it. Perhaps you should also cover up the badges and labels on your car and disguise it too. [/sarcasm]

It is a violation of privacy because you no longer have anonymity in a crowd. Police can put multiple of the things around the city and effectively track movement of the cities vehicular populace. If this doesn't come over as Orwellian, than what does?

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

After your car is stolen the only party with a financial stake in it is the insurance company. You're out of the picture. You'd rather the criminals had one less hurdle to overcome? You'd rather make it easier for them and possibly motivate them to steal more cars? How the f does keeping your stolen car's location a secret from the new owner (the insurance company) help you or anyone else in this scenario?

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

After your car is stolen the only party with a financial stake in it is the insurance company. You're out of the picture. You'd rather the criminals had one less hurdle to overcome? You'd rather make it easier for them and possibly motivate them to steal more cars? How the f does keeping your stolen car's location a secret from the new owner (the insurance company) help you or anyone else in this scenario?

That's a bizarre straw man argument. Insurance companies don't make arrests and can't get warrants to do searches. Locating stolen property and arresting the people responsible is the job of the police, not the insurance company. Unless you are proposing we privatize law enforcement and let the corporations handle it, this argument makes no sense.

After the fact, the information is really only useful to the insurance company for investigating insurance fraud, and it would be pretty limited in that case. Even if they found something, they would have to take it to the police anyway. Before the fact, it could in principle be used by the insurance company to determine your risk factors and change your rates or cancel your policy based on your behavior. E.g. have friends in higher risk neighborhoods? Your rates go up.

That's a bizarre straw man argument. Insurance companies don't make arrests and can't get warrants to do searches. Locating stolen property and arresting the people responsible is the job of the police, not the insurance company. Unless you are proposing we privatize law enforcement and let the corporations handle it, this argument makes no sense.

After the fact, the information is really only useful to the insurance company for investigating insurance fraud, and it would be pretty limited in that case. Even if they found something, they would have to take it to the police anyway. Before the fact, it could in principle be used by the insurance company to determine your risk factors and change your rates or cancel your policy based on your behavior. E.g. have friends in higher risk neighborhoods? Your rates go up.

Or you could read the article:

"Roger Morris, the NICB's chief communications officer, clarified by e-mail that only authorized Special Investigations Units personnel from NICB member companies have access to such data for theft prevention activities."

(Yes, I removed Cyrus' snarky in-line air-quotes)

The argument is only bizarre if you completely discount the deterrent value of actually arresting someone for auto theft and recovering the vehicle, which sometimes happens.

And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the insurance companies already "determine your risk factors and change your rates or cancel your policy based on your behavior". This is kinda what their job is.

She added in that year, it was also the last week of the Muslim holy week of Ramadan.

“The fact that there has been quite a bit of government surveillance of Muslim communities in Los Angeles, and I thought getting license plate data from the last week of Ramadan might be able to tell us if the cops were focusing their surveillance efforts on Muslim communities and businesses during that week,” she clarified by e-mail.

Lynch added that she had no idea how many records might turn up on an average week, but suspected that it might be in the hundreds of thousands.

If she only had access to data for one week that includes Ramadan, how would she know if the surveillance was focused or if there was more or less surveillance compared to any other week? And why would she hypothesise that the police would be doing extra surveillance during this particular week? If she said she was asking for the records for the week including Christmas to see if the cops were focusing on Christians, she'd be called a nutter.

That makes sense to me too. The fact that the police are monitoring your whereabouts is a violation of your privacy to some extent. If they go handing out that data to everyone who asks that is a much greater violation of your privacy. Where I happen to be at any given time should not be part of the public record.

If she only had access to data for one week that includes Ramadan, how would she know if the surveillance was focused or if there was more or less surveillance compared to any other week?

It does seem like a loaded request. It seems as though they are trying to maximize their chances of finding grossly disproportionate surveillance of the Muslim community. It's easier to spot the trend you're looking for if you hand-pick the samples.

That being said, I have no doubt the LAPD is surveilling the Muslim community to a greater degree than others.

Totally insane, sooner or later they won't be able to afford to keep all the electronic records online. They're already complaining about budget cuts so now they have yet another system they'll need to maintain?

It's actually cheaper to keep data forever than it is to do the programming and operations to delete data that are no longer needed. {sigh}

I think you'll agree, based on my intimate knowledge of American culture, gleaned mostly through popular television shows and various internet forums, what I've developed here is a robust set of heuristics for pushing LPR to its true potential.

IMO, this information should be available to everybody or to nobody. If people are uncomfortable with everybody knowing where they've been, they should be uncomfortable with the police knowing and should fight the collection of the data. Allowing the police but not the public to know further entrenches police as a superior class of citizen.

"We're not going to give out that information, it's a violation of their privacy.”

No no no. The original scanning of my license plate violated my privacy.

There should be no expectation of privacy regarding vehicle license plates. Driving a vehilce on public roads is a regulated privilege, not a right. Every state requires owners to overtly display license plates on every vehicle that will be used on public roads, specifically to facilitate the easy identification of those vehicles at any time by the government.

The only thing precluding the government from exercising that authority constantly is resource limitations. It previously limited license plate checks out of necessity, not because there weren't other times that checking them could also be useful. As technology is leveraged to offset the resource shortfall, the more often checks can be conducted and the easier the resulting information can be used in novel ways.

Don't want to participate in this Orwellian scheme? 1) don't drive on public roads, 2) vote to change the laws that require vehicle registration and license plates in the first place, or 3) vote to create laws which specifically dictate when the license plate checks can be done. The issue doesn't belong in the courts, it belongs in the legislature.

For those who say, "it's public information", I disagree. The data is transformed by volume. Any specific entry is the same as a police officer writing it down, but when you automatically record hundreds of thousands of entries a day, the result is something fundamentally different and should be treated as such.

I don't agree with this. The automation of a function doesn't affect whether there's a right to have it not happen. The LAPD could pay people to stand on street corners and photograph the license plate of every car that goes by, then pay other people to record the plate numbers from those images and place them in a database somewhere. If it's okay to do that, I don't see where it's suddenly not okay to have a series of machines do it all. The first one is clearly possible if the LAPD had a budget big enough to handle it.

Basically, if it's not illegal, then the people of LA will have to decide through their votes whether they want this sort of thing to go on.

"We're not going to give out that information, it's a violation of their privacy.”

No no no. The original scanning of my license plate violated my privacy.

Don't want to participate in this Orwellian scheme? 1) don't drive on public roads, 2) vote to change the laws that require vehicle registration and license plates in the first place, or 3) vote to create laws which specifically dictate when the license plate checks can be done. The issue doesn't belong in the courts, it belongs in the legislature.

IMO, this information should be available to everybody or to nobody. If people are uncomfortable with everybody knowing where they've been, they should be uncomfortable with the police knowing and should fight the collection of the data. Allowing the police but not the public to know further entrenches police as a superior class of citizen.

Police are trusted agents providing law enforcement, and allowed regulated access to information that would otherwise be private. Abusing that trust can get them fired or prosecuted, just like doctors violating patient privacy, lawyers and accountants violating client privacy, etc. None of the these jobs make the people holding them superior to the average citizen; their jobs just necessitate the access to some pieces of non-public info.

As somebody who works with one of the lead LPR developers in the country this is hardly something new. Groups are constantly trying to get access to the system for various reason. Whether it be to ensure police are not abusing the systems somehow or for more nefarious reasons like trying to undermine the systems.The problem with these requests is that the amount of data that can be collected in even one day can be MASSIVE. The system can be hooked into a patrol car and then start scanning multiple plates per second.

Then you go into the issue of exactly what data do you give them?Do you have to just hand them a list of what plates were scanned? Attach location data? Attach time data? Attach the return queries from other agencies on plate information?What about when the LPR doesn't get a clean read and scans for "best match"? Do you get all those extra returns as well?Do you have to attach and officer's information whom is running the machine?

Back to the point I guess...that is a massive amount of data and there are problems requesting it.We have no problem giving it to people. Issues just arise from groups who request information....and that's it. As if we have to spend time/money to figure out how to give them that data.

LPR is here to stay and will only get better and more wide spread. Certain controls do need to be in place(we don't believe in sharing info with insurance companies) but overall this is an amazing technology that will only help law enforcement catch bad guys.

EDIT: As a point of order on this literally 5 minutes ago the LPR lead was running a scan on one of the new cameras and spotted a stolen vehicle. Police are now converging on the location.

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

After your car is stolen the only party with a financial stake in it is the insurance company. You're out of the picture. You'd rather the criminals had one less hurdle to overcome? You'd rather make it easier for them and possibly motivate them to steal more cars? How the f does keeping your stolen car's location a secret from the new owner (the insurance company) help you or anyone else in this scenario?

If the insurance company has paid out they own the car and from the date of the pay out they no longer a 3rd party and can pull data for the duration of 'their' ownership, they should not have access to data when you are the owner the same way as you should not have access to data from the previous owner, but again the argument that 3rd parties have no right to the data stands.

Seems like a good public way to get an ill-defined point across would be to have ten of thousands of individuals rally together and all file individual information requests for their own vehicles so they have an interest in the data. If the forms to file were available online and could be easily filed then the system would be quickly overwhelmed making the point that the people do have an interest that this data collection is of concern.

I don't think such a data shouldn't be shared with third parties like insurance companies or even organizations like ACLU o EFF. Ideally there wouldn't be such a scanners, but if there are, only I and law enforcement should have access to my records Public disclosure is dangerous and against privacy.

I definitely agree that it shouldn't be shared with 3rd party companies (e.g. insurance companies), however I can see a potential use if they were to truly anonymize the data (more than just hash the plate number, come up with random unique numbers assigned to each plate) for analysis by interested persons upon request.

After your car is stolen the only party with a financial stake in it is the insurance company. You're out of the picture. You'd rather the criminals had one less hurdle to overcome? You'd rather make it easier for them and possibly motivate them to steal more cars? How the f does keeping your stolen car's location a secret from the new owner (the insurance company) help you or anyone else in this scenario?

If the insurance company has paid out they own the car and from the date of the pay out they no longer a 3rd party and can pull data for the duration of 'their' ownership, they should not have access to data when you are the owner the same way as you should not have access to data from the previous owner, but again the argument that 3rd parties have no right to the data stands.

A bank providing the car loan is an interested 3rd party for the duration of the loan, and could make an argument supporting access to the same information as the registered "owner".

That's a bizarre straw man argument. Insurance companies don't make arrests and can't get warrants to do searches. Locating stolen property and arresting the people responsible is the job of the police, not the insurance company. Unless you are proposing we privatize law enforcement and let the corporations handle it, this argument makes no sense.

After the fact, the information is really only useful to the insurance company for investigating insurance fraud, and it would be pretty limited in that case. Even if they found something, they would have to take it to the police anyway. Before the fact, it could in principle be used by the insurance company to determine your risk factors and change your rates or cancel your policy based on your behavior. E.g. have friends in higher risk neighborhoods? Your rates go up.

Or you could read the article:

"Roger Morris, the NICB's chief communications officer, clarified by e-mail that only authorized Special Investigations Units personnel from NICB member companies have access to such data for theft prevention activities."

(Yes, I removed Cyrus' snarky in-line air-quotes)

The argument is only bizarre if you completely discount the deterrent value of actually arresting someone for auto theft and recovering the vehicle, which sometimes happens.

And I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the insurance companies already "determine your risk factors and change your rates or cancel your policy based on your behavior". This is kinda what their job is.

Ok, I suppose the world is stranger than I thought. The NICB (not an insurance company but funded by them) is in fact looking for stolen cars. I would like better safeguards on how that data is used. Policy is to make it available to insurance companies only for purposes of investigation of stolen cars, but that's current policy and not binding.

As for risk factors and rates... of course insurance companies do, but only to the extent that they have the information. Your rates depend on things they know like age, employment status, address, driving record. I don't believe your rates depend on the location of your workplace or school, and certainly not on the location of your favorite grocery store, the addresses of your friends, the kinds of businesses you frequent. They don't charge you extra for hanging out with people from a worse neighborhood. But that's because they don't have the information. It should stay that way.

I wasn't surprised that Piedmont would have LPRs. They already pull people over for what year car they drive, and what the occupants look like. The darker their skin, the more likelihood they'll be pulled over. But I digress. What I find so amusing is the fact that they even go to this trouble, as the justice system in California is a revolving door for criminals. The police arrest them, the courts convict them, but once the Bureau Of Prisons gets them, they can let them go at anytime. They are under a federal court order to reduce prison populations, and the Bureau Of Prisons can therefore override any sentence, and without notice to anyone. The criminals know this too, so they have no fear of lengthy incarceration. The public doesn't know though, they think that criminals that get sentenced to 30 years do 30 years. You can also bet that the LPRs are being abused by aw enforcement too. They have this "us against them" mentality and you are guilty until proven innocent.

You can also bet that the LPRs are being abused by aw enforcement too. They have this "us against them" mentality and you are guilty until proven innocent.

You are incredibly jaded against the police. Did something bad happen to you when you were younger?

Funny enough about the LPR systems is that in our department it actually is a struggle to GET officers to use them. They think they undermine their own skill and experience and want to do things on their own.

Also how exactly could an officer "abuse" the LPR system?All custom searches are logged and any custom entry is checked over by the LPR manager. So even if they flag a plate to look out for they don't get any information on where that plate is flagged in real time or anything of that sort. So it would only be useful in their own car....at which point they can use their own eyes to do the exact same thing.As I said I work with one of the lead LPR devs in the country, so please enlighten us exactly how an automated system that checks for stolen vehicles or known suspects can be "abused".Because to me it sounds like you don't actually know anything about how the system actually works and are making grandiose assumptions.